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Monday, October 31, 2016

It is literally impossible for the world community to get a clear understanding of, and truth about, the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This statement is based upon the Feature article in Columbia Journalism Review(“CJR”) dated October 25, 2016 entitled: “Sinking a Bold Foray Into Watchdog Journalism in Japan” by Martin Fackler.

The scandalous subject matter of the article is frightening to its core. Essentially, it paints a picture of upending and abolishing a 3-year attempt by one of Japan’s oldest and most liberal/intellectual newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun (circ. 6.6 mln) in its effort of “watchdog journalism” of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the end, the newspaper’s special watchdog division suffered un-preannounced abrupt closure.

The CJR article, whether intentionally or not, is an indictment of right wing political control of media throughout the world. The story is, moreover, extraordinarily scary and of deepest concern because no sources can be counted on for accurate, truthful reporting of an incident as powerful and deadly dangerous as the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima.…

Bill Clinton had already established liberal interventionism as the Democratic counterpart of neoconservatism on the Right, and Barack Obama furthered it as R2P, especially at the instigation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Now Killary is running with it, joined by neoconservatives disaffected with Donald Trump's foreign policy realism, coupled with the manufactured "need" to confront Russian aggression based on revanchism.

Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg (“The Nobel factor: the prize in economics, social democracy and the market turn”) look at the strange death of social democracy at the hands of market liberalism. That death was accelerated by the role of the Nobel prize in economics that conferred to economics an allure of science and that was used to much greater profit by neoliberal economists to push for their version of economic policies.Offer and Söderberg define social democracy as a continuation of Enlightenment: from equality before God to equality before law, to equality between men and women and races, to equality of entitlements between citizens. Since each citizen goes through periods of dependency (as a child, as a mother, as unemployed, or as an old person) when he/she cannot earn an income, he has to depend on transfers from the working age population. This life-cycle pattern is shared by all, and thus society, in a form of social insurance, sets a system that provides redistribution from the earners to the dependents.How does market liberalism solves the life-cycle problem? By positing that everyone is a free agent with his endowments of capital and labor. When he cannot work, he uses the proceeds from his capital (assuming of course that he originally either inherited or saved enough wealth to have a capital). It is not a “society” in a true sense of the word, but a group of “agents” who manage own income over the life-cycle. Since returns are to one’s ownership of labor and capital and there is no redistribution, it is a “just world” society where one gets back what he has put in, and where income inequality is never an issue—precisely because income is exactly proportional to one’s contributions.These are indeed two different views of the world. As Offer and Söderberg write, social democratic view was extremely successful empirically but was not theoretically worked out much by economists. The neoliberal view has exactly the reverse characteristics: empirically it was not much of a success (look at private pension schemes in Chile), but economists have extensively worked on it theoretically…

The difference between social democracy and market liberalism can be summarized as a difference in approach.

Market liberalism assumes methodological individualism based on ontological individualism, so that economics can be pursued as an autonomous discipline.

Social democracy assumes that individuals are embedded in social systems, one aspect of which is economic.

Perhaps the most telling difference is that market liberalism assumes that efficiency and economic growth are the chief criteria of economics. Economic" has come to mean efficient.

Social democracy, being based on systems thinking, posits that overall effectiveness of the system in accomplishing its social, political and economic goals is of a higher priority than economic growth and economic efficiency, and that economic efficiency must be brought into balance with systemic resilience.

A chief problem with theoretical economics based on the methodological choices of market liberalism is that the necessity for restrictive assumptions makes much of the theory inappropriate for informing policy.

A second issue is that market liberalism does not consider policy goals but assumes that market efficiency leads to systemic optimization in all major respects, which goes illogically beyond the assumptions and data.

Social democracy begins with desired outcomes and seeks to achieve those outcomes based on historical experience and evidence provided by data as well as social, political and economic theory.

The question of return implies that the answer is historical. History is dialectical, proceeding experimentally and adapting to emergence. There is no categorical "end of history." While history does not repeat itself it does rhyme in the sense that experiment draws on experience.

The dialectical nature of both experience and history is that when one position is posited, its complement, although excluded, is necessarily included as a potential. As anomalies arise with a particular view, since no view is can be a comprehensive account owing to emergence, the complement is called forth as opposing views. The human experiment is never complete.

For example, market liberalism is a political stance that equate political liberalism with economic liberalism.

Social democracy views economic liberalism as only one aspect of liberalism along with social and political liberalism. The challenge is to harmonize this trifecta by acknowledging its paradoxes as they arise and transcending them by innovating the system.

The rest of the post examines how an interest elite intentionally conflated economic liberalism with political liberalism., for example, through by establishing the "Nobel prize in economics."

Milanovic then posits what he views as the four major challenges to the return of social democracy.

I view such challenges to the return of social democracy as it formerly existed as examples of emergence. The next stage of the experiment will not be a return to the past but rather drawing on the past while innovating in order to surpass the deficiencies of the present approach.

MMT speaks to this economically and socially in terms of macroeconomic theory and policy formulation based on the fiscal space that the current monetary system provides to address overcapacity owning to demand deficiency in a market-based world.

These, and perhaps a few other, elements seem to me to imply that a return to the Golden Age of social democracy is unlikely to happen. On the other hand, there is a realization of inadequacy of the neoliberal model that bequeathed a huge crisis (which did not turn into another Great Depression precisely because the key rules of neoliberalism were abandoned in order to save the system). As many times in history, we are now at the point where neither of the two established doctrines seems to provide reasonable answers to today’s issues. That leaves the field open to new thinking and experimentation.

Global InequalityWill social democracy return? A review of Offer and Söderberg
Branko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and formerly lead economist in the World Bank's research department and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Jack Goldsmith, Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, co-founder of Lawfare, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and co-chair of its Working Group on National Security, Technology, and Law, Benjamin Wittes, Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution

Just when you thought things could not anymore bizarre in this election, Harry Reid accuses James FBI Director James Comey of withholding information about the Trump-Russian connection, demands that he release it, and threatens him with the Hatch Act.

Anonymous warns the governor to back off or they will release documents showing the conflict of interest and then goes on to say that if one protestor on the Indian side is harmed, Anonymous will “release docs on” the individuals responsible.

Students from the Chinese mainland are making up the major share of international students in primary and middle schools of English speaking countries….

Liberal education versus Mandarin education. In addition, English fluency is key to success in an Anglo-American dominated world.

Knews, a local Chinese media outlet, says more Chinese parents are sending children under 17 to school overseas."[Education there] would focus more on students' personal development. They will not place too much focus on scores, ranking or exams," a mother told Knews, as she looked for a British primary school for her child.…

The goal of liberal education is to produce a well-rounded individual, while the goal of a Mandarin education is to select the technocracy.

Syrian rebel groupies in the US expressed disappointment with Democracy Now it hosted Bassam Haddad. Syrian rebel groupies basically said that they have been used to Democracy Now being their propaganda outlet and were upset that Bassam Haddad was invited. Of course, Bassam is very critical of the Syrian regime and holds the regime responsible for much of the bloodshed but that is not enough for Syrian rebel groupies. For Syrian rebel groupies, one is Shabbih and a regime stooge if one is not 100% with the rebels and if one offers any criticisms of the rebels. This is like Zionist tactics: if one does not support Israeli occupation and war crimes, one is an anti-Semite.…

Same can be said for America. President George W. Bush: "You are either with us or against us." Forget the nuance. There's nothing to argue. When civilian are killed by others, it is a war crime. When the US and its allies kill civilians, it is a mistake.

The real story here is not the effect of Comey's "October Surprise" on the election but the back story about the FBI, which is in a state of revolt against politicized leadership.

[Former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom] said Sunday that Bill and Hillary Clinton are part of a “crime family” and argued top officials hindered the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was secretary of State.… Kallstrom also said that FBI Director James Comey and the rest of the FBI’s leadership were responsible for holding back the investigation, not the rest of the bureau.

“The agents are furious with what’s going on, I know that for a fact,” he said.

Difficult to know Comey's motive for releasing this news, but the speculation is that fear of a whistleblower in the department doing it first and the potential for being charge with obstruction of justice himself may have led Comey to cover his ass, especially since he is under heavy fire from Republican leaders in congress and Trump is gaining in some polls.

The US is really turning into a banana republic.

The good news is that the Clinton campaign that "Putler did it" on this one, unless maybe they argue that Anthony Weiner was a Putin plant or defected to the Rooskies after he imploded himself.

However, the really concerning matter in all this is that the American intelligence services appear to be have been compromised by the elite and bent to their interests instead of serving the people as their mission and oath requires.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Buried deep inside Saturday’s New York Times was a grudging acknowledgement that the U.S.-armed “moderate” rebels in Syria are using their U.S. firepower to back an Al Qaeda offensive, reports Robert Parry.

Friday, October 28, 2016

The Saudis are claiming that the Houthis were targeting the Kaaba, after the Saudis experienced global outrage over targeting Houthi civilians.

Why would the Houthis target Mecca? To scare fellow Muslims from undertaking the hajj? In order to reduce Saudi income from pilgrims? It makes absolutely no zero sense.

Why would the Saudi accuse the Houthis of targeting Mecca. Makes all the sense in the world as propaganda.

And remember that recently the Houthis were accused of targeting a US ship. The US struck the Houthis in retaliation. Later the US admitted that it had no firm evidence of the attack, and the incident may been the result of a US Navy mistake. This was after the outrage at the Saudis target civilians was also directed at the US for arming them and doing just about everything else but pull the trigger.

The Yemeni Houthi army's spokesman on Friday denied Saudi allegation of targeting the holy city of Mecca with a ballistic missile, noting that it targeted a Saudi airport in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, in a statement carried by Houthi-controlled state Saba News Agency.

Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman said that Thursday's ballistic missile attack "has hit the target" with 100 percent accuracy, stressing that the target was inside the King Abdel Aziz Airport in Jeddah, west of Mecca.

He slammed the allegation as "a media war and misleading of public opinion," affirming that his army fighters are "very careful to spare civilian areas, particularly the Islamic holy sites, from any attack."

Saudi state news agency SPA reported Thursday that a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis from Yemeni northern province of Saada was intercepted 65 km from Mecca.

Does anyone else find it curious that America's enemies reported to be constantly targeting civilians intentionally, while when America or its allies are caught hitting civilians, it is always a mistake.

Appeal to Adam Smith is almost always an argument from authority, a logical fallacy. Moreover, the citation of this authority is usually wrong. It's actually a reference to Paul Samuelson rather than Smith.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Referring to the National Covenant – a 1920 declaration by the last Ottoman parliament, which was used by the newly formed Turkish Republic as the basis of its initial negotiating position at the conference of Lausanne, which eventually established Turkey’s present borders – he claimed that according to “certain historians” it had included within Turkey’s borders:

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou wrote earlier on the claims made by Erdogan about Turkey’s right to certain Greek islands. He also used historic, linguistic and religious ties to claim for Turkey a gigantic zone of influence for itself

“Turkey is not only Turkey. Not only for 79 million citizens, but Turkey bears also responsibility towards our hundreds of millions of brothers in the geographical area to whom we are connected through our historical and cultural ties.

It is a duty, but also a right of Turkey to be interested in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea, Karabakh, Bosnia, and other sister areas (NB: this is a reference to Azerbaijan and former Soviet Central Asia – AM). The moment you give up this, it will be the time when we lose our independence and our future”.

Only 14 percent of registered voters in the United States believe the country’s foreign policy has made them safer since 2001, according to a poll of 1,000 Americansreleased today by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest. More than half believe that both the U.S. and the rest of the world are less safe today as a result of the nation’s foreign policy choices over the last 15 years.

Likewise, only 25 percent of American voters feel the next president should expand the use of military abroad, while over half feel that the next administration should use the military less than it has been used since 2001.

John Allen Gay | executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society, a national network of student groups centered on a vision of foreign policy restraint, and a former managing editor of the National Interest

Having unveiled the first images of its new nuclear missile capable of reaching US soil, Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning today that Washington’s actions are “pushing Russian into a nuclear arms race,” forcing Russia “to develop its nuclear attack systems.”

This will be Obama's legacy. You know, the guy that got the Nobel Peace Prize at the time of his election.

If the worst happens, the world won't have to be concerned with carbon-based global warming anymore.

Abstract

A nuclear war between Russia and the United States, even after the arsenal reductions planned under New START, could produce a nuclear winter. Hence, an attack by either side could be suicidal, resulting in self- assured destruction. Even a ÒsmallÓ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each country detonating 50 Hiroshima-size atom bombsÑonly about 0.03 percent of the global nuclear arsenalÕs explosive powerÑas air bursts in urban areas, could produce so much smoke that temperatures would fall below those of the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries, shortening the growing season around the world and threaten- ing the global food supply. Furthermore, there would be massive ozone depletion, allowing more ultraviolet radiation to reach EarthÕs surface. Recent studies predict that agricultural production in parts of the United States and China would decline by about 20 percent for four years, and by 10 percent for a decade. The environmental threat posed by even a small number of nuclear weapons must be considered in nuclear policy deliberations. Military planners now treat the environmental effects as collateral damage, and treaties currently consider only the number of weapons needed to assure destruction of opposing forces. Instead, treaties must call for further reductions in weapons so that the collateral effects do not threaten the continued survival of the bulk of humanity. Proliferation cannot be treated as a regional problem. A regional conflict has the potential to cause mass starvation worldwide through environmental effects.

In 1988, John and Tony Podesta formed the Podesta Group and have used their bigwig party-insider status to lobby and influence government policies — while, at various times, simultaneously holding positions of power — which has created a number of glaring conflicts of interest.According to the March 2016 filing made in accordance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, Tony Podesta is an active foreign agent of the Saudi government with the “Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court,” and acts as an officer of the Saudi Arabia account.

I used to think that it might be a good idea for the federal government to guarantee everyone a universal basic income, to combat income inequality, slow wage growth, advancing automation and fragmented welfare programs. Now I'm more skeptical.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Like many aspects of mainstream economic theory – free trade – is one of the concepts that sounds okay at first but the gloss quickly fades once you understand the basis of the theory and how it derives its seemingly ideal results. In practice, the textbook ‘model’ is never attainable in reality and so what goes for ‘free trade’ is really a stacked deck of cards that has increasingly allowed large financial capital interests to rough ride over workers, consumers and undermine the democratic status of elected governments. Further, even within the mainstream approach the terrain has moved. The old perfectly competitive ‘models’ of free trade, which go back to the Classical economist David Ricardo and were embodied in the so-called Heckscher-Ohlin and were used to disabuse notions of government intervention (protection, tariffs, import duties etc), have been surpassed in the literature. This blog is Part 1 in a two-part (might be three) series on why progressives should oppose moves to ‘free trade’ and instead adopt as a principle the concept of ‘fair trade’, as long as it doesn’t compromise the democratic legitimacy of the elected government. This is a further instalment to the manuscript I am currently finalising with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. The book, which will hopefully be out soon, traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and formed the view that the state has become powerless (or severely constrained) in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. This segment fits into Part 3 which focuses on ‘what is to be done’.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blogThe case against free trade – Part 1Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

The other day I wrote an article about how the national debt is not really a debt at all, but just part of the assets of the non-government. You know, basic MMT stuff.

I even included a link to a table from the Daily Treasury Statement that showed how the Federal Government redeemed (paid back) $94 Trillion last year. I did this to try to show how all the fear-mongering by Pete Peterson and Fix the Debt, etc was a total manipulation.

Well, after that article went up I got f'ckin bombarded with emails. These are just a few. Read them. Once you read them you will see that the public is sooo f'ckin ignorant on this stuff that I am sure, without a doubt, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution will happen.

What a crock of SHIT! This is just more lies published by the toadies of the 600 billionaires who are NOT paying their share of taxes, and who ARE systematically looting the assets of the United States.

You are TRULY STUPID! You must be liberal because your math skills suck. Many foreign governments and investors own treasuries; we pay interest on them that will soon take up over half our budget; and yes the money gets paid back. Man you are DUMB! Go peddle you BS elsewhere. WOW!

You missed it on this article.The statement says 94.2 trillion was paid off but it also says there is 95.6 trillion of new debt. You have to look at the net to figure out what is going on. We basically went into debt by another 1.4 trillion. It is the way accountants handle things. Apparently the debt is being refinanced over and over again. If you re-financed the million you owe on your private island, the books would say 1 million paid and 1 million new debt. If you re-financed it again for 1.2 million, the books would now say 2 million paid and 2.2 million new debt.

This article is trash and is a fucking lie. There is debt and there is interest. You are a true joke and I'm not sure how this article got past your editor. If you'd like to debate your philosophy, let's do it. Oh, and the Revolutionary War was not fought over a TAX, it was fought over who controls currency. idiot.

Hi Mike,I read your article on the illusion of the National Debt. Then I went to the websites you said were shams, Fix the Debt, and read their prophecies of doom. Then I went to Wikipedia. That led me to this link:http://www.gao.gov/financial_pdfs/citizensguide2008.pdfWhere the gov seems to be telling me that current medicare and social security spending are unsustainable, and the debt is a big problem. I'm trying to get fair and balanced information, and your column "it doesn't exist" seems to be as extreme to one side as Fix The Debt is to the other...I always thought spending more than you make is a BAD thing. What's the deal?Thank you.

Dear Mr Norman - I am writing to you with interest in your answering 2 questions.1) If, as you assert, there is nothing to worry about with the national debt, is it an equal assertion that the line item that covers debt service in the federal budget is also of equal meaninglessness?I assume these debt payments are real and without a national debt these debt payments would either not need to be paid or the money could be spent in other ways. Please clarify if you will.2) If the debt is meaningless, could then the Fed simply apply an easement to this number to wipe it out? Why would this not be a good idea?Thank you.Dave KSeattle WA

Could not disagree more with your article. There is debt and it IS owed to the people/other nations. Garbage article.

Mike, I just looked over your article and the screen shot of the Treasury page you talk about. I also looked at the line about Net Change to Public Debt and saw it was only about $1.4B as a result of the $94 trillion redemption. I presume almost all of that amount went to interest on the debt, and the amount of debt was only reduced by $1.4 trillion.

Just read your article "There is no Debt", and it made sense to me, except I wonder, "Then why is the spending power of the government limited? Why can't we do more things?" You see, I work for the Navy, and see all sorts of budgetary constraints, lack of resources to do the most basic things, etc. While in an accounting sense there is no debt, there is a problem with something, perhaps with something other than debt but is conflated with the national debt, that is limiting us. Indeed, why do we pay taxes? Can we stop paying, if there is no debt? Not trying to pick a fight, but some more explanation and clarification will help. Thanks!

Foolish article. The money is owed to foreign countries. You think we are idiots ?

You, are an idiot

The $94 trillion you mention is from accounting of mostly non-marketable securities. These are securities that are made up of payments and reciepts for Social Security, Pensions, etc. within the government. It is not the total that matters it is the difference. You are misleading your readers with your article.Debt matters, it matters because we are spending today's money by paying with future tax dollars.

And if we believe that bull crap story that you liberals would have us believe, then you've got a bridge to sell us, cheap, right???? What about the trillions of dollars we've borrowed from China? ----they're just going to write that off, Right?That's like saying we don't have any debt on our houses or cars because we make payments on them How gullible do you think the American people are? We're not all as stupid as your liberal bunch of sheep are, who just bury their heads in the sand and believe all your crap like this

Then why collect taxes? If there is no debt.

Hi Mike,I just read your article on national debt and why it doesn't matter. Its so contrary to what I hear and read constantly I had to write in with a few questions. Yes, the government paid out $94T in your example,but it also took in $95T in the same period. So in essence they're capability to pay depends on confidence in the system. The fed can print money,but if this is abused doesn't it devalue currency? If everyone had a money printer in their house,what would happen to the value of goods and the purchasing power of the dollar? The value of currency depends on its scarcity to some extent. Japan is proof that the limits can be stretched,but I find it hard to believe that the markets capacity for money printing is infinite. History is riddled with examples of bubbles and economic collapse. How are the laws of economic gravity different today?

Isn't that the same thinking the Greek government / economists were telling their people who dared to "fret" about their country's :debt"?

Thoughtful argument, Mike but you miss the point. Number 1. Dollars spent by government are not as productive as dollars coming from the private sector. And Two. The debt is a measure of government intrusion. Example. The government fined (I say shook down( banks for $250 Billion since 2009. Most of that money wen to the regulators. Banks are levered 10 to one so that would mean $2.5 Trillion came out of the economy. And that is just one example. Costs of compliance from regulators is trillions more and mostly they are too attacks of personal property rights. Half our economy is now public and public employees. And the whole cycle leads to Corporatism.

There are Issues and Redemption's and you completely ignore the fact that they took in more than they paid out. Your article is flawed.

i don't get your logic. the government issued 1.4 trillion than it redeemed (last line of table). to me thats increasing the debt subject to interest of 14 billion assuming a 1% rate. if the government used the money for social programs, it gets no payback but still has the debt. if the government used the money to create jobs, it gets a payback thru payroll taxes to service the debt. ???

You are a dangerous man, a monumental asshole. You were paid to write this, which makes you an immoral and unethical asshole. In fact you are $20Trillion assholes wrapped up in one big asshole. You should be ashamed.

The Merriam-Webster definition of debt is "an amount of money that you owe to a person, bank, company, etc." Investopedia tells us that "When an investor purchases a T-Bill, the U.S. government writes an IOU." When I go to the bank to get money from them that I don't have, the only way I can get it is to borrow it from them. They issue me a loan of some kind. I sign papers (a form of note promising them I will pay back the money) that indicate an IOU status for the money I now have, and they do not have.Are we playing with words here? Enron famously played the game you described: "There is the proof, right in front of our noses, that the debt is meaningless. It's just a bunch of bookkeeping entries. Keystrokes." Where is Enron today?You stated, "If you go to the last statement of the fiscal year . . .you will see the government redeemed (paid back) $94.2 trillion in one year!" First, if it isn't a debt, why did you use the phrase in parentheses, "paid back"? Second, where did the government get $94.2 trillion to pay anything back? They didn't get it from taxpayers, and they certainly didn't get it from where it was just "lying around somewhere&quot

Mike, you really need to read "The Debt Virus" as well as understand the manner in which Government borrows money and pays interest on that borrowing and how it inflates the money supply. Even if the inflation is "checkbook" money, it still has an effect on prices and growth.

Mike,I am curious after reading your article "The National Debt: why Fret......", what happens to the paper treasuries if on January 1, 2017 all oil trade settlements were changed to Euro's instead of Dollars ?My point, because of Oil Trades must all be settled in US Dollars there is an unbalanced Demand for US Treasuries that allows our Govt via the FED to always borrow or continuously refinance said debt from the last 240 yrs.There is no basis to pay the debt, it just gets rolled over and diluted.Am I wrong herewhat can happen if you pretend the debt doesn't matter.

Actually, it's you who is misinforming. You are correct in that the US redeemed and reissued 90trillion dollars. Who cares? If debt didn't matter, why not run a trillion $ deficit? Why not $5T or $10T? Let's build those roads, pay for everyones college bills and give all people a basic benefit. At some point, the interest on that debt over takes the budget. Now - we could say that doesn't matter because we can issue all the $ we want to take care of this interest. We only need to look at other countries who have done this to see how that worked out for them. STOP

Mike, if the government can spend more than it takes in and incur no debt, then why tax us in the first place? Why not just spend to their heart's content? The answer is, there is a national debt and I think you need to go back to Economics 101. Our country is about the learn how devastating this irresponsible spending has been. I eagerly await your correct to your silly article. Good luck.

Mr. Norman, debt isn't an asset, it's the opposite...a liability. Take a basic accounting class. You are so clueless I don't know where to start with your ridiculous article on "no national debt". How did anyone print your article?

Cold War 2.0 has reached unprecedented hysterical levels. And yet a hot war is not about to break out – before or after the November 8 US presidential election.

From the Clinton (cash) machine – supported by a neocon/neoliberalcon think tank/media complex – to the British establishment and its corporate media mouthpieces, the Anglo-American, self-appointed “leaders of the free world” are racking up demonization of Russia and “Putinism” to pure incandescence.

And yet a hot war is not about to break out – before or after the November 8 US presidential election. So many layers of fear and loathing in fact veil no more than a bluff…

Revelations from the Wikileaks release of John Podesta's emails yet again prove mainstream, corporate media serves as Hillary Clinton's personal cheerleading squad — and is devoid of any iteration of journalistic integrity.Thanks to Wikileaks and the Intercept, in fact, we now have a list of no less than 65 mainstream "reporters" whose campaign coverage constitutes propaganda for the Clinton campaign — and no wonder, considering the obscenely lopsided drivel presented by their outlets.As (actual) journalists Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang reported on October 9, the Intercept exclusively received documents obtained by the source known as Guccifer 2.0 evidencing Clinton campaign tactics to court journalists portraying the former secretary of state in a positive light."As these internal documents demonstrate," the Intercept reported, "a central component of the Clinton campaign strategy is ensuring that journalists they believe are favorable to Clinton are tasked to report the stories the campaign wants circulated.

Exchanging integrity for access. Pretty similar to exchanging contributions for access.

Backgrounder in conjuring up enemies and manufacturing consent to fight them.

Summary: Clinton has stocked her foreign policy team with advisors belligerent and reckless, eager for conflict with Russia. The military-industrial complex’s propaganda mills work to arouse fear and hatred of Russia, as they did during the Cold War. Let’s learn from that history before we starting risk a terrible war. We were told mostly false stories about the Soviet Union. How accurate are those about Russia? {This updates my post from Oct 2009.}

Yet I suspect there is a reluctance among the majority of economists to admit that some among them may not be following the scientific method but may instead be making choices on ideological grounds. This is the essence of Romer’s critique, first in his own area of growth economics and then for business cycle analysis. Denying or marginalising the problem simply invites critics to apply to the whole profession a criticism that only applies to a minority.

The problem is that this minority is a powerful one and the economics profession is not run democratically but by established and entrenched elites, whether they be "freshwater" or "saltwater."

Robert Gordon quote that sums it up by attacking George Stigler's claim that rigor supersedes relevance in economics. This would make economics a branch of mathematics and logic rather than a science that describes the world of facts and events that has a history.

Under Stigler's view, which is the dominant view in conventional economics, economics is not a "real" science like other sciences but that rather a bogus one that only looks like a science.

Conventional economics is better categorized as applied mathematics instead of science, and conventional economists approach it as such. They should just call it by it right name and let others do economic science without criticizing them for prioritizing relevance over rigor.

There was an interesting interview published in the financial market journal Central Banking this week with Otmar Issing, who was the ECBs first chief economist and a former European Central Bank executive board member. He predicted that as a result of the political corruption of the monetary union ideal, “the house of cards will collapse.” He was referring to the claim that the ECB has become captured by politicians and technocrats in the IMF and the European Commission such that it is now violating essential central banking principles, in addition, to Treaty obligations that were designed to safeguard the financial stability of the system. I have some agreement with his overall view that a federal solution to the Eurozone ills is not viable. But I do not agree that the ills of the Eurozone stem from recent political decisions – to pressure the ECB to engage in QE or other interventions. The reality is that the flawed design of the Eurozone, which reflected the ideological hold of neo-liberalism on the integration discussions in the 1980s and beyond, meant that the only effective fiscal capacity in the currency union was held by the ECB. If the ECB had not started buying up government bonds in May 2010, the monetary union would have collapsed about then. The whole problem is that neo-liberalism brought these Member States together into a monetary architecture that was doomed from the start…

Petras mentions but doesn't emphasize that something similar is happening in Thailand.

Asian countries realize that the economic future lies with China rather than the US, which is chiefly an Atlantic power allied with Europe, and doesn't have non-white peoples interests at heart. They are getting tired of being used as pawns in the global game, and now face the possibility of getting shut out of China while being treated as US colonies.

For the first time in history, China has surpassed the United States in total foreign investment. Moreover, Chinese companies' interests have expanded beyond energy and other natural resources. Analysts explain that this may be an indication that the country's economy is shifting from export-oriented growth to a focus on domestic demand.…

Innovation-led growth can square a circle that is challenging modern capitalism: how to generate sustained and sustainable economic growth, built on high-value, well-paying jobs. This is at the core of entrepreneurial societies, and it is a good objective. The problem is how to get there. Although many countries have set the goal, few have achieved it.

The reason for this elusiveness lies in widespread misunderstandings about how innovation-led growth has been achieved in the past. These misunderstandings have allowed the wrong narratives to drive policy making, with individual entrepreneurs and companies as the central characters of the story. Left unchallenged, this narrative leads to counterproductive policy making and a distribution of rewards from growth that doesn’t reflect the actual distribution of risks.

An entrepreneurial society needs an entrepreneurial state, one that through visionary and strategic public investments, distributed across the innovation chain, can create animal spiritsin private businesses. Entrepreneurs then see growth opportunities, and business investment follows.

John Atkinson Hobson was an English economist in the second-half of the C19th and worked well into the C20th, dying at the age of 81 in 1940. I have been reflecting on his work in the context of wage and other labour market developments in recent years. Hobson, individually and with co-authors, provided some excellent insights into how rising income inequality, mass unemployment and increased poverty destabilises the economic system through its impacts on consumption spending. He argued that government should engender what he called a ‘high-wage economy’ which would provide the best basis for prosperity. He was writing as an antagonist to the trends of the day, which considered wage suppression to be good for business and society. In this blog, we consider some of those issues. This is a further instalment to the manuscript I am currently finalising with co-author, Italian journalist Thomas Fazi. The book, which will hopefully be out soon, traces the way the Left fell prey to what we call the globalisation myth and formed the view that the state has become powerless (or severely constrained) in the face of the transnational movements of goods and services and capital flows. This segment fits into Part 3 which focuses on ‘what is to be done’.

Bill Mitchell – billy blogRising inequality and underconsumptionBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

"Just about anybody with decent computer literacy could pull something off like that," said [Carmen] Medina [former CIA deputy director of intelligence] who has 32 years in the intelligence field. She added: "The attacks last week could very well have been disaffected gamers."

Well, now, that's reassuring. It's not just "the Russians" we have to be concerned about.

First, the relationship between well costs (finding and development costs plus operating costs) and the producer’s breakeven price (price necessary to achieve a zero rate of return) is essentially linear. That means if costs drop by 50%––as they have––then the producer’s breakeven price drops by 50%, all other things being equal. So if a producer’s rate of return was $80/bbl two years ago, now it would probably be closer to $40/Bbl.

So therefore non-cartel sector production should keep steadily increasing until it displaces all cartel sector imports.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Now, while the origin of the attack is still unknown (even though we're sure that Hillary's "17 intelligence agencies" have their suspicions), we're getting a better idea of how the attack was executed. According to Bloomberg, Internet-connected CCTV cameras made by a Chinese firm, Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology Co., were infected with malware that allowed hackers to takeover "tens of millions" of devices to launch the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Keynes is discussing how to use the quantity theory of money as an analytical tool.

What he is saying is that you cannot assume that you can analyze the consequences of an altered time path of the quantity of cash in the economy--n, in Keynes's notation--without considering whether the public's demand for real cash balances k, the public's demand for real checking-account balances k', and banks' desired reserves-to-deposits ratio r will also change. This is a principle that today's economists call the "Lucas Critique". (No, it is not clear to me why they do not call it the "Keynes Critique".) And this critique is correct: assume that those three other variables are not themselves altered when you consider an altered path for the money stock is, as Keynes says in the sentence after "in the long run…", for economists to set themselves too easy a task--it sweeps all the problems of analysis under the rug--and too useless a task--it generates predictions that are simply wrong.

In this extended discussion of how to use the quantity theory of money, the sentence "In the long run we are all dead" performs an important rhetorical role. It wakes up the reader, and gets him or her to reset an attention that may well be flagging. But it has nothing to do with attitudes toward the future, or with rates of time discount, or with a heedless pursuit of present pleasure.

The current trend in liberalism is to extend rights to animals as in "animal rights. Most liberal jurisdictions have humane laws. Kosher and halal injunctions also relate to prohibition of animal cruelty. Buddhists include all beings. So do so-called primitive peoples.

The idea that reason can be separated from biology and ontology is a Western notion that arose in ancient Greece with the assumption that the rational principle distinguishes humans from non-humans. This was expressed philosophically and theologically through the concept of the human soul. In Christian doctrine, only humans had souls. This gave rise to the René Descartes assuming a separation of mind and body, as well as that animals were machines without souls.

This led to the Western liberal concept of the person as distinct from the individual. While human individuals are unique and unequal "accidentally," human "personhood" makes all humans equal as persons, meaning that there is no innate privilege through birth, so all are equal before the law and all enjoy equal rights as human beings, although under bourgeois liberalism, "all" was initially defined to exclude women and those to of European ethnicity.

This concept and its associated assumptions was questioned by science, which could find no material basis for it. Humans came to be viewed as machines without souls, like other animals. This became the basis for behaviorism in psychology, which was imported into economics as a fundamental assumption called "rationality"as "maximizing utility." Think Pavlov's dogs, Skinner's pigeons and lab rats. This was not lost on marketing & advertising, and PR.

Psychology and the social sciences are moving beyond that view based on discoveries in biology and neurology. Evolutionary theory is also refuting the Cartesian assumptions as well. See, for example, Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error.

The Enlightened EconomistNot the smartest animals
Diane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation

Champion of the people, or slave driver? Sheriff Bill is on Hillary's case.

The general media has been treating the WikiLeaks disclosures of the Clinton campaign documents, particularly the transcripts of her lucrative talks with Goldman Sachs as much ado about nothing. I have not found any article about the disclosures, however, that reported on the extraordinary statements she made in her talk with Goldman Sachs on June 4, 2013.

Hillary told the Vampire Squid that the “good news” was that China was removing workers’ (meager) legal protections so that their employers could “forc[e] down wages” in order to increase corporate profits. She used China’s (pathetically weak) legal protections for workers as her exemplar of China’s “structural economic problems.”

Thirdly, they seem to — and you all are the experts on this. They seem to be coming to grips with some of the structural economic problems that they are now facing. And look, they have them. There are limits to what enterprises can do, limits to forcing down wages to be competitive, all of which is coming to the forefront…

Clinton’s support for “forcing down wages” by removing China’s meager protections for workers reveals that her (leaked) admission that she is increasingly “far removed from the struggles of” the working and middle-class is a grave understatement. She is not simply “far removed” from their “struggles” – she continues when speaking secretly to Wall Street to attack workers’ interests.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

The principles and values of classical liberalism are enshrined in American culture because they are what the nation was founded upon, unlike any other country on Earth.

Three of America’s mainstream ideologies have stemmed from a classical liberal culture: conservatism, libertarianism, and liberalism. Their own spin on the ideology of their roots follows as a result of the primary goal of each - preserving the social order, preserving liberty, and solving social problems, respectively. While these goals have put the competing ideologies at odds with each other over the past several decades, they must unite lest they let the fascists and Marxists gaining in power bring about the end of the “liberal consensus” (in the classical sense) these three ideologies have forged, which Ross Douthat identifies as a possibility.

A coalition of conservatives, libertarians, and reasonable liberals can emerge by returning to the classical liberal tradition of their roots. Conservatives would have to drop their tendency to bring religion into politics. Libertarians would have to drop their tendency to see no legitimate role for government at all. Liberals would have to drop their tendency to use the government as a vehicle for social change. If done properly, this could create a governing majority that wants to reduce the size and power of government in a secularized America.…

Some paradoxes of liberalism. Can liberals unite and create a political coalition in spite of them? I doubt it. The differences are too great to bridge based on "freedom" alone.It's a pretty good post for a high school student though.

It's one thing for the right-wing press to accuse the Clinton foundation of cronyism, corruption, and scandal (especially if the facts, and internal admissions by affiliated employees, confirm as much) - it tends to be generally ignored by the broader, if left-leaning, media. But when the Watergate scandal's Bob Woodward, associate editor at the liberal Washington Post, says very much the same, Hillary Clinton's campaign has no choice but to notice. This is precisely what happened today when journalist Bob Woodward told a Fox News Sunday panel that the Clinton Foundation is "corrupt" and that Hillary Clinton has not answered for it.

Here, courtesy of RealClearPolitics, is the transcript of today's exchange:

Peter Turchin | Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, Research Associate in the School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, and Vice-President of the Evolution Institute

Revealing back and forth between Tom Morello and Bill Maher on Maher's show.

Morello imo exemplifies the general outrage of the alt-left in the face of much socio-economic injustice and Maher (probably playing devil's advocate a bit) points out that it takes more than just the outrage to deliver. Morello doesn't put up much argument.

Illustrates pretty well perhaps what is going on in the current contrasting between the alt-left and alt-right positions.

Video of some of Morello and new band's recent work here; think like an open nerve ending sending a message:

We have maintained here for some time that the Turkish President Erdogan has designs for Aleppo as well as Mosul. He wants to incorporate both cities and all areas north of them into Turkey. Erdogan now publicly announced these aims:

Speaking during an opening ceremony for an educational institution in Bursa on Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared the way that Syrians and Iraqis have been driven away from homes because of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS; ISIS/ISIL), to how Turkish people were once forced out from the same cities.

Erdogan added that the cities of Mosul and Aleppo belong to the Turkish people.

This is a serious misinterpretation of teh areas population history and of Turkey's international agreements and borders as delineated after the first world war.

Erdogan also lamented that Turkeys national leaders were born outside of Turkey's current borders. Something he implied he will strive to correct. The Greek will not be happy to hear that. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was born in Thessaloniki…

Much more in the post, but this is the game-changer. Neo-Ottomanism openly declared.